A tapping on the window jerked her attention from her chores back to the real world. She went to the door and opened it to admit a woman of about Sam’s age, with pigtailed magenta hair. Her name was Natalie.
“Hello,” said Natalie. She went up on tiptoes and kissed Sam, depositing the kiss snugly between Sam’s cheek and the corner of her mouth. You can say a lot of things with a kiss like that. “You done?”
“Nearly.”
“You want to see a movie?”
“Sure. Love to. I’ve got a good five minutes left here, though. Why don’t you sit and read the Onion?”
“I saw this week’s already.” She sat on a chair near the door, ruffled through the pile of newspapers put aside for recycling until she found something, and read it while Sam bagged up the last of the money in the till and put it in the safe.
They had been sleeping together for a week now. Sam wondered if this was it, the relationship she’d been waiting for all her life. She told herself that it was just brain chemicals and pheromones that made her happy when she saw Natalie, and perhaps that was what it was; still, all she knew for sure was that she smiled when she saw Natalie, and that when they were together she felt comfortable and comforted.
“This paper,” said Natalie, “has another one of those articles in it. ‘Is America Changing?’ “
“Well, is it?”
“They don’t say. They say that maybe it is, but they don’t know how and they don’t know why, and maybe it isn’t happening at all.”
Sam smiled broadly. “Well,” she said, “that covers every option, doesn’t it?”
“I guess.” Natalie’s brow creased and she went back to her newspaper.
Sam washed the dishcloth and folded it. “I think it’s just that, despite the government and whatever, everything just feels suddenly good right now. Maybe it’s just spring coming a little early. It was a long winter, and I’m glad it’s over.”
“Me too.” A pause. “It says in the article that lots of people have been reporting weird dreams. I haven’t really had any weird dreams. Nothing weirder than normal.”
Sam looked around to see if there was anything she had missed. Nope. It was a good job well done. She took off her apron, hung it back in the kitchen. Then she came back and started to turn off the lights. “I’ve had some weird dreams recently,” she said. “They got weird enough that I actually started keeping a dream journal. I write them down when I wake up. But when I read them, they don’t mean anything at all.”
She put on her street coat and her one-size-fits-all gloves.
“I did some dream work,” said Natalie. Natalie had done a little of everything, from arcane self-defense disciplines and sweat lodges to feng shui and jazz dancing. “Tell me. I’ll tell you what they mean.”
“Okay.” Sam unlocked the door and turned the last of the lights off. She let Natalie out, and she walked out onto the street and locked the door to the Coffee House firmly behind her. “Sometimes I have been dreaming of people who fell from the sky. Sometimes I’m underground, talking to a woman with a buffalo head. And sometimes I dream about this guy I kissed in a bar last month.”
Natalie made a noise. “Something you should have told me about?”
“Maybe. But not like that. It was a Fuck-Off Kiss.”
“You were telling him to fuck off?”
“No, I was telling everyone else they could fuck off. You had to be there, I guess.”
Natalie’s shoes clicked down the sidewalk. Sam padded on next to her. “He owns my car,” said Sam.
“That purple thing you got at your sister’s?”
“Yup.”
“What happened to him? Why doesn’t he want his car?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s in prison. Maybe he’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“I guess.” Sam hesitated. “A few weeks back, I was certain he was dead. ESP. Or whatever. Like, I knew. But then, I started to think maybe he wasn’t. I don’t know. I guess my ESP isn’t that hot.”
“How long are you going to keep his car?”